What they have in common is that all are
among 37 locales featured in John Gurda’s outsize book
“Milwaukee: City of Neighborhoods.”

Gurda,
69, the metropolitan area’s best-known historian, has
penned a score of books - pre-eminently,
documentary-spawning “The Making of Milwaukee” 18 years
ago. But “City of Neighborhoods” is the one that’s been
labeled “the most comprehensive account of grassroots
Milwaukee ever published.”

In his introduction to “City of
Neighborhoods,” Gurda points out the 465-page tome “is
based on my belief that every neighborhood has a story
uniquely its own to tell, and that putting a broad range
of community chronicles between two covers can encourage
a sense of belonging within individual neighborhoods and
a sense of mutual respect across neighborhood borders
and even beyond the city limits.”

Narrative text, photographs and
accompanying cutlines, maps and information boxes in
Gurda’s book tell readers the White Manor neighborhood
is alternately called St. Sava in deference to the
Orthodox cathedral of several domes that has stood for
60 years near South 51st Street and West Oklahoma Avenue
(where a prominent neighbor is fish fry famous Serb
Hall); that Bay View was originally a Milwaukee suburb,
the city’s first; that St. Luke’s Hospital relocated to
the Jackson Park neighborhood from Walker’s Point in the
early 1950s; that Southgate, also in Jackson Park, was
Milwaukee’s “first modern shopping center.”

Gurda, a Bay View resident with a
master’s degree in cultural geography, will bring his
native Milwaukee to Waukesha County on Tuesday, via a
visit to the Muskego Public Library. “An Evening with
John Gurda” will consist of an illustrated presentation
by the historian, followed by a book signing. Copies of
“City of Neighborhoods” will be available for purchase.

“We have had John Gurda here before,”
Muskego librarian Elke Saylor told Conley Media, “but it
has been over five years. People kept asking us to bring
him back and, given his new book, we thought the time
was right.”

A rather perfunctory examination of the
book’s photos, a number of them snapped by Gurda
himself, reveals Milwaukee’s last of three 20th-century
Socialist mayors (1948-60), Frank Zeidler, strolling in
his Harambee neighborhood with wife Agnes and several
children; an image of an early African-American citizen
of the Rufus King neighborhood, baseball Hall of Famer
Hank Aaron; the North Point Lighthouse and its tender’s
tidy white frame dwelling next door; the
semiprofessional Kosciuszko Reds’ wooden baseball
stadium in the shadow of St. Josaphat’s Basilica; the
elaborate high altar of St. Anthony’s Catholic Church,
located, as was the Reds’ ballpark, in the historic
South Side area; young Billy Mitchell, future father of
the U.S. Air Force, angling with his own father on the
Kinnickinnic River.

Also noted: the Town of Lake water tower
under construction circa 1940; a portion of an American
centennial year - 1876 - map of the Milwaukee metro
region; the lobby of the grandiose old National Theater
in Clarke Square; a head shot of South Side pioneer
George Walker (as in Walker’s Point) and the celebrated
Allen-Bradley clock in the pioneer’s old neighborhood;
that conversation piece of an Upper East Side residence
constructed almost a century ago in the form of a boat;
the semicircular arrangement of red brick buildings on
the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus that
previously served Downer College for women; and UWM’s
stately Mitchell Hall (where, more years ago than he
cares to remember, this reporter met his future wife in
a basement journalism classroom).

A 13-page index references all sorts of
people, places and things (advertisements for Boston
Store and the Milwaukee & Mississippi Railroad, city
founder Solomon Juneau and wife Josette, the Beulah
Brinton Community Center, the Gettelman Brewing Company,
the statue of Gertie the Duck downtown). Most chapters
begin with a striking Janice Kotowicz illustration
symbolic of the neighborhood whose story immediately
follows.

The only thing I’ll object to about “City
of Neighborhoods” is that the one in which I primarily
grew up, Morgandale, is not among those represented.
Gurda notes in his introduction, however, that he
“confined (his content) to the pre-World War II city” of
Milwaukee. Oh, well. The historian will just have to
think about producing a sequel for us Morgandalers and
residents of the Wedgewood Park, Granville Station and
New Coeln communities.

Asked whether his book’s overall subject,
as a municipality of neighborhoods, is actually much
different from other cities, Gurda responded that, while
“all cities have neighborhoods,” the Milwaukee
“topography really lends itself to the formation of
small-scale communities. Three rivers and the broad
Menomonee Valley divided the city into distinct ‘Sides,’
and each of them was further subdivided into
neighborhoods. They range from isolated pockets like
Pigsville to large landscapes like the Historic South
Side.”

What factors have rendered resilient at
least some of the communities with which “City of
Neighborhoods” deals - and how are Milwaukee’s
neighborhoods coping with 21st-century challenges?

“Just like all the children in a very
large family,” said Gurda, “some Milwaukee neighborhoods
are thriving while others are struggling. The strongest
communities - places like Bay View, North Point,
Brewer’s Hill and Washington Heights - tend to have
clear borders, distinctive architecture, local
businesses and robust organizational lives.”

Upcoming event

“An Evening with John Gurda”

- When: 7 p.m. Tuesday

- Where: Muskego Public Library, S73W16663 Janesville
Road; Muskego

- What: The author of “Milwaukee: City of Neighborhoods”
will take an illustrated look at the city’s makeup,
followed by a book signing and sale.